Jamie-Lynn Sigler

You might know her also as Jamie-Lynn Discala since she used to be married to her manager, A.J. Discala, but you will definitely know her as Meadow in the hit show about hitmen, The Sopranos. "I have no Italian in me. I'm Cuban, Greek, Romanian, and Sephardic Jew," she says.… "But I guess I've been adopted into that family, too,"

In her new autobiography, Wise Girl, Jamie-Lynn talks about how she has been acting-- and also singing-- since she was 7. Her most recent TV appearance was on Ugly Betty.

Jamie has been in movies since The Sopranos, but so far, none have been hits. Let's hope the streak ends with her new one, New York City Serenade, with Wallace Shawn. After that, it's Wake, a mystery about a mysterious roadside motel. (Did you know that "motel" is a combination of the words "motorist" and "hotel"? That's because motels are on highways, and "motorist" is an old-fashioned word for "driver.")

She's also going to be in Son of Mourning. In this one, a guy goes back to his hometown to deal with his parents' divorce, only to be mistaken for a visiting guru the town is expecting! That's sort of the opposite of The Love Guru and Holy Man, about con artists who want people to think they are gurus!

On the stage, Jamie-Lynn has had much more success and has been in Annie, The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music and Gypsy. Her Broadway debut was Belle in the stage version of Beauty and the Beast and she toured in Cinderella. The music for all these musicals was written by Jews, by the way! Earlier in her career, Jamie-Lynn was in the play Anne Frank.

In her book, Jamie-Lynn also discusses how she struggled with an eating disorder while starring on The Sopranos. She is now a spokeperson for the National Eating Disorders Association. "I went public with my eating disorder because I wanted to make some good come of this terrible episode in my life," she says. "I want to reach young girls and let them know that there is a way out; there is help available. No one should have to suffer in silence." For us, this is even braver than singing on stage, or appearing on TV in front of millions of people.

Bonus:

In real life, some famous mobsters and gangsters-- sad to say-- have been Jewish. To be honest, 90% of what they did was criminal, but every once in a while, they did something good. As one book about Jewish gangsters was titled, ...But He was Good to His Mother.

For instance, they helped get guns into Israel when it was figting for independence. They defended striking workers against the thugs their own employers sent to beat them up. They broke up gangs of racists who were going to riot and hurt innocent minority people.

And one Jewish mobster turned the city of Los Angeles from a desert wasteland into the mega-city it is today. His name was Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel; Warren Beatty played him in the movie Bugsy. Another famous Jewish gangster was Meyer Lansky-- played by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie about him-- who tried to flee U.S. justice by going to Israel but was denied entrance by Golda Meir. Great actor Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz, also played a Jewish gangster, Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter.

Jewish gangsters have even figured into some fictional movies, too, like the Godfather series. But all that was a loooooong time ago... or as yet another movie about Jewish orgnanized crime was called, Once Upon a Time in America.